Wednesday 24 September 2008 13.00 EDT
First published on Wednesday 24 September 2008 13.00 EDT

In the New York Times, Bob Herbert asked, rhetorically, in his excellent column on the Wall Street bailout: "Have you ever seen a president who was more irrelevant than George W Bush is right now?"

Last week, MSNBC's Chris Matthews struck a similar note during his bloodbath of an interview with Eric Cantor, a Republican congressman from Virginia, noting that a "normal president, at this time of a crisis, would be on national television at nine at night talking to the American people about the problems we face".

The thing is, this isn't a recent occurrence. My co-blogger and I were talking about how Bush had all but disappeared back in January. He's been ridiculously absent for almost an entire year now — as the election has consumed the political media, he's slipped away almost wholly unnoticed, retreating to his bike rides and pretzel choking, or whatever it is he does to while away his days. It's only just become more evident now since there's what might fairly be called a giant national calamity of a sort that generally elicits a president's interest and presence.

He is, however, truly the most useless waste of space on the planet, whose only talent, such as it is, appears to being go awol.

People joke, or say quite seriously, that we're all better off the less involved Bush is — to which there is certainly some truth, but it masks a reality that really shouldn't go unremarked upon: The people who are filling the void of leadership he's left are people he appointed. Our nation is being run by people we haven't elected because the guy we did choose doesn't seem to be interested in the job anymore.

This fact has been patently obvious for at least a year. He's all but put an "I'd Rather Be Brushclearin'!" bumper sticker on Air Force One. It's no surprise he didn't have the decency to step down and let someone else do the job he can't be bothered doing (and for which he was always manifestly unqualified, anyway). It's no surprise that his own party didn't have the integrity to prioritise the good of the country over the good of their party and force out the idiot king. And it's no surprise that the Democrats didn't have the collective spine to put impeachment back on the table. No, none of these things are surprising.

But they are infuriating nonetheless.

And they are remorselessly galling, these various derelictions of duty, having happened as they have under the red, white and blue shadow of an enormous star-spangled banner, to rousing shouts of "My patriotism is better than yours!" and spontaneous renditions of "God Bless America" — a bunch of self-proclaimed patriots with their Team Patriot lapel pins and their futile fists clamped around the staffs of the Made-in-China mini-flags they wave.

Everyone in Washington is a patriot these days, but no one cared enough about America to effectively address that its leader long ago abandoned the scene.

And so we wait.

While President Awol waits out the rest of his second term, we wait to see just how much destruction his disastrous leadership has wrought and wait to see how many Americans lose their little pink houses before he is evicted at long last from the white one we're all meant to own. We wait to see if, as I expect and dread, he will emerge from his ruinous presidency precisely as unscathed as the average American is scathed.

We wait for an election that feels like it will surely never come, in which both of the candidates who are auditioning for role of Oval Office Occupant are promising change.

That they actually want to do the job is a refreshing change in itself.